Francisco Román-Dañobeytia

Aims: Pastoralism is a land‐use system that involves the care and use of grazing livestock and has been more common in areas of low resource availability. In this review, we analyze the impact of pastoralism on biodiversity and ecosystem services across the tropical Andes. This region is the most extensive and populated tropical mountain region in the world and presents a high diversity of biomes, livestock types and management histories. Given that pastoralism is a main land use here, understanding its impacts is important for providing appropriate recommendations for sustainable management.Location: Tropical Andes; Venezuela to the north of Argentina and Chile.Methods: To understand these impacts, we performed a systematic literature search (August 2021) and obtained 103 articles. We created a conceptual framework to map how available research has contributed to our understanding of the main pastoral systems, their associated management strategies and the impact of different grazing intensities on vegetation cover/diversity and ecosystem services.Results: We found that research has focused on two leading pastoral systems in the region: bovines in the páramo biome of the northern Andes and camelids in the puna biome of the central Andes. We found important environmental impacts at high grazing intensities for both the puna camelid and páramo bovine pastoral systems, including a decrease in soil organic carbon and an increase in soil compaction, a decrease in above‐ground biomass, plant species richness, and graminoid cover, as well as clear changes in the growth‐form composition of vegetation.Conclusions: Given these findings, we recommend coordinated research efforts using common methodologies, documenting current and previous land use, including stocking rates, and combining observational and experimental approaches to develop a more integrated understanding of pastoralism's impacts across this diverse and vulnerable region.

Mobilizing funds is a major challenge to achieve scalable Forest Landscape Restoration projects. While pure ecological restoration may not be a feasible investment from the private perspective, combining native species with non-timber forest products (NTFP) species may be a solution for reaching large scale and financially sustainable forest restoration. This study addresses potential species combinations for 12 restoration models, three models being based in pure ecological restoration and nine models being based on agroforests with NTFP, their economic costs, and benefits in tropical forests in Brazil, Peru, Cambodia, and Indonesia. A total of 12 semi-structured interviews were conducted to capture the models’ productivity and prices. As for the prices that the producers did not know, specialized stores were consulted in the cities of the collection. The starting investment to restore 01 hectare (ha⁻¹) of tropical forest ranged between US $104 and $7736, with an average of $1963 ha⁻¹ and a standard deviation of $2196 ha⁻¹, considering the 12 cases evaluated in 2018 and 2019. From nine restoration models that had economic purposes, financial indicators showed a median net present value (NPV) of $1548 ha⁻¹, and a median internal rate of return of 22%, considering a discount rate of 10%. The NPV varied between $−685 ha⁻¹ and $55,531 ha⁻¹. Costs of pure ecological restoration were on average 42% lower than agroforestry systems, but did not produce direct income from NTFP, therefore yielding negative NPV. The study demonstrated the economic feasibility of seven of nine models that had economic objective, showing that there are promising business cases for private investment in tropical forest restoration.

This document synthesizes a model for the restoration of degraded areas by gold mining, developed between 2008 and 2016 by the Consortium Madre de Dios CMDD with the Florida University, and the support of the Government and People of the United States of America. This successful reforestation experience, continued by CMDD and CEDE, as well as by CINCIA, is part of an environmental management proposal, which with the support of communication tools and knowledge management has included the education of children with mental disabilities due to effects mercury contamination in alluvial gold mining; and since 2016 with CMDD CEDE and the Ministry of Energy and Mines MINEM, through effective interaction between stakeholders has strengthened governance and incorporated an environmental mitigation component with clean technologies. In the context of the current controversial and polemic political situation in Peru (2021) 21 miners' associations in process of being formalized in Madre de Dios are considering their implementation. Este documento sintetiza un modelo de restauración de áreas degradadas por la minería de oro, desarrollado entre 2008 y 2016 por el Consorcio Madre de Dios CMDD con la Universidad Florida, y el apoyo del Gobierno y del Pueblo de los Estados Unidos de América. Esta exitosa experiencia de reforestación, continuada por CMDD y CEDE, así como por CINCIA, es parte de una propuesta de gestión ambiental, la cual con el apoyo de herramientas de comunicación y gestión del conocimiento ha incluido la educación de niños con discapacidad mental por efectos de contaminación por mercurio en la minería aluvial aurífera; y desde 2016 con CMDD CEDE y el Ministerio de Energía y Minas MINEM, mediante efectiva interacción entre las partes ha fortalecido la gobernanza e incorporado un componente de mitigación ambiental con tecnologías limpias. En el marco de la actual controversial y polémica coyuntura política del Perú (2021) 21 asociaciones de mineros en proceso de formalización en Madre de Dios están considerando su implementación.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are an increasingly popular approach to water resources management, with a growing number of projects designed to take advantage of landscape effects on water flow. As NBS for water are developed, producing hydrologic information to inform decisions often requires substantial investment in data acquisition and modeling; for this effort to be worthwhile, the information generated must be useful and used. We apply an evaluation framework of salience (type of information), credibility (quality of information), and legitimacy (trustworthiness of information) to assess how hydrologic modeling outputs have been used in NBS projects by three types of decision makers: advocates, implementers, and analysts. Our findings, based on documents and interviews with watershed management programs in South America currently implementing NBS, consider how hydrologic modeling supports two types of decisions for NBS projects: quantifying the hydrologic impact of potential and existing NBS and prioritizing where NBS might be sited within a watershed. To help inform future modeling studies, we identify several problematic assumptions that analysts may make about the credibility of modeled outputs for NBS when advocates and implementers are not effectively engaged. We find that salient, credible, and legitimate results in applications evaluating NBS for water are not always generated in the absence of clear communication and engagement. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:135–147. © 2021 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC). KEY POINTS Hydrologic information can be evaluated based on salience (relevance of information), credibility (quality of information), and legitimately (trustworthiness of information); our interviews suggest salience and legitimacy are critical to whether model outputs are useful and used. We identified three key target audiences in NBS projects—implementers, advocates, and analysts—with distinct information needs; quantifying the hydrologic impact of NBS is of interest to all three audience types, but for different reasons. Interviews about the type and sophistication of hydrologic models necessary for NBS projects in practice suggest that simpler models that gain legitimacy because they are more easily explained can provide sufficiently credible information to take action. Mutual understanding of the aims of the project among implementors, advocates, and analysts is critical to ensure that the actual variable of interest is identified and modeled and that non-hydrologic constraints are considered.

Research Highlights: We find that biochar plus fertilizer has synergistic and positive effects on seedling growth and robustness, but slightly lowers early seedling survival. Biochar plus fertilizer has the potential to greatly decrease costs associated with afforestation as compared to traditional fertilization and gives better results. Background and Objectives: Biochar can improve soil fertility and plant yield in crops. However, there is little information regarding the effects of biochar on trees, even though reforestation/afforestation projects are increasing and are often unsuccessful due to soil fertility limitations. This study aims to increase knowledge of biochar use as a reforestation tool. Materials and Methods: We measured survival and growth in an early ((Guazuma crinita Mart. [n = 240])) and a late (Terminalia amazonia (J.F. Gmel.) Exell. [n = 240]) successional species under 6 different biochar treatments in a 6-month nursery experiment. Results: (i) Survival was highest in the 1 t/ha biochar treatment, while treatments containing fertilizers or biochar at 5 t/ha lowered the survival rate of both species compared to the control; (ii) simultaneous addition of biochar and fertilizer lead to significant increases in height, diameter, total number of leaves, and aboveground and belowground biomass of both species as compared to other treatments; (iii) biochar treatment containing 1 t/ha with and without fertilizer showed significantly better results than applications of 5 t/ha; and (iv) Guazuma crinita responded more strongly to treatments containing biochar and fertilizers compared to Terminalia amazonia, which is suggestive of greater synergetic effects of biochar and fertilizer addition on early successional tree species. Conclusions: Applying biochar and fertilizer is synergistic and outperforms any single treatment, as well as the control, in terms of plant performance. This case study suggests that biochar can greatly improve reforestation/afforestation projects by increasing plant performance while substantially reducing fertilizer and labor maintenance costs. Field experiments and testing of additional species is needed to generalize the findings.

While deforestation rates decline globally they are rising in the Western Amazon. Artisanal-scale gold mining (ASGM) is a large cause of this deforestation and brings with it extensive environmental, social, governance, and public health impacts, including large carbon emissions and mercury pollution. Underlying ASGM is a broad network of factors that influence its growth, distribution, and practices such as poverty, flows of legal and illegal capital, conflicting governance, and global economic trends. Despite its central role in land use and land cover change in the Western Amazon and the severity of its social and environmental impacts, it is relatively poorly studied. While ASGM in Southeastern Peru has been quantified previously, doing so is difficult due to the heterogeneous nature of the resulting landscape. Using a novel approach to classify mining that relies on a fusion of CLASlite and the Global Forest Change dataset, two Landsat-based deforestation detection tools, we sought to quantify ASGM-caused deforestation in the period 1984–2017 in the southern Peruvian Amazon and examine trends in the geography, methods, and impacts of ASGM across that time. We identify nearly 100,000 ha of deforestation due to ASGM in the 34-year study period, an increase of 21% compared to previous estimates. Further, we find that 10% of that deforestation occurred in 2017, the highest annual amount of deforestation in the study period, with 53% occurring since 2011. Finally, we demonstrate that not all mining is created equal by examining key patterns and changes in ASGM activity and techniques through time and space. We discuss their connections with, and impacts on, socio-economic factors, such as land tenure, infrastructure, international markets, governance efforts, and social and environmental impacts.

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASM) is becoming a significant cause of environmental degradation in tropical ecosystems. In this study, we conducted a rapid assessment on the impact of an ASM gold mine on the vocalizing avian and anuran communities in the buffer zone of the Tambopata National Reserve in Peru. We used seven audio recorders (three near an active mine, two in an abandoned mine, and two in an adjacent forest) to collect 2900 recordings to generate soundscapes and compare acoustic activity patterns of birds and anurans among sites. We identified 56 bird species during the morning chorus (05:00-07:00) and 9 anurans species in the evening chorus (18:00-20:00). Bird species richness was similar between the forest (28 bird species), the abandoned mine (25 species) and the active mine (24 species), but species richness of birds sensitive to disturbance was much lower in the active mine. In contrast, anuran species richness was highest in the active mine (5 species) and lowest in the forest (2 species). Results indicate that acoustic monitoring and soundscape analysis can be effective tools for evaluating the impact of mining activities on vocalizing species, and could become useful tools in rapid environmental impact assessments for mitigation and conservation strategies in ASM mining regions.

In many parts of the Neotropics, deforested areas are often colonized by the highly competitive invasive bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum), which inhabits naturally regenerated forests and successional forests on abandoned farmland. Within the tropical forest region of Chiapas in southern Mexico, we implemented an experiment in 2005 to out-compete bracken fern infestation and reduce or eliminate live bracken rhizomes using several treatments: Direct sowing of balsa seeds (Ochroma pyramidale; Malvaceae), a traditional Lacandon treatment of scattering balsa seeds, transplanting balsa seedlings, and a control treatment (without balsa). For each treatment, we applied three different bracken weeding frequencies: No weeding, biweekly weeding, and monthly weeding. In this study, we present data gathered four years after establishing the experiment regarding: Bracken fern rhizome biomass, balsa density, basal area, height, density, species richness of naturally regenerating vegetation for all treatments, and bracken weeding frequencies. We also evaluated the importance of balsa and its regenerative attributes in controlling bracken fern by correlating it with remaining belowground live rhizome biomass. Living rhizome biomass was completely eradicated in all treatments with biweekly and monthly weeding. Density and species richness of a naturally regenerated species were negatively correlated with bracken fern rhizome biomass, and the density of this species was highest in areas with no rhizome biomass. Although balsa tree stands are effective short-term solutions for controlling rhizome biomass, the success of natural regeneration following balsa establishment can be critical to long-term elimination of bracken fern.